Unlucky in Law (3 page)

He had a few good memories mixed in with the bad ones. When his brother had gotten sick, that was bad. Gabe would lie in bed, pasty white, listless, while their mom rushed around to doctors looking for hope. Sometimes Mom looked at Stefan, and even though she tried to hide it, he saw her outrage that it was Gabe who had gotten sick, and not him. Gabe was her favorite, born loved and deserving of success, with Stefan the sidekick goofball who slipped on banana peels when there weren't any.

But Gabe got cured, and Stefan was proud that he had been able to help him with that. Now look at Gabe, Mom's gold-star boy, making decent money and taking her out for Mother's Day next month to some fancy restaurant in San Francisco. And check out her younger boy, out here in the cold, digging up a dead body, getting a rhythm going, panting, liking the exercise and finding the work remarkably easy. This dirt wasn't hard; in fact, it was strangely uncompacted, considering the guy had been buried for over twenty-five years. That heavy rain last night must have softened the ground a lot.

Gabe would never have agreed to do this. Mom always said Gabe got the smarts and Stefan got the muscles. Stefan didn't necessarily agree. He had ideas, lots of them, as many as Gabe. He would like to start a business someday, where he could work outside. He thought he could do better, now that he had Erin. He had someone who respected him, who thought he came first.

Yes, he would have a business, and then they would have kids, and that was fine by him. He wanted that. He wanted to create a happy family with her. His childhood wasn't happy, with his mom always treating him like second-best after his brother, her hero. A chronic, infernal worry about money had hung over their lives like a bad moon. His mother and brother both loved him, he believed that, but being poor didn't help family relations. He would love his kids equally. He would take them camping, be the good father he had never known.

His thoughts went back to Erin. He would buy her a new bed, with a pillow-top mattress, and an aquarium for her birthday. Erin liked goldfish. And after tonight, he could finally afford that ring, the one in the window she pretended not to notice, the one that made her look hungry.

Something in the dirt stopped the shovel. He looked into the open grave. Dirt, blackness, wet. A shiny patch? He probed at it, around it. Six feet deep, that's how deep the old man was supposed to be, so how come he'd only dug a couple of feet and the shovel was hitting something?

He scraped around the obstruction, trying to figure out where the edges were in the big hole. Because he felt fear overtaking him, he put the shovel aside for a moment and, head up, listened to the wind, which was stirring up the plants and getting loud. Dude, didn't anybody else notice? No, they wouldn't. They were dead!

He laughed, his nerves tingling right down to his fingertips. Eucalyptus and the scent of the local pine mixed unpleasantly with the damp old dirt in the air, hanging around him like mildewed walls. Working the soil again, he couldn't locate any edges to the thing, whatever it was, in the grave, so he gave up with the shovel and put it on the ground beside the hole. He jumped in with the pick, staying close to the edge, but rubbing up against the dirt. He had worn canvas shoes so that they could be washed later.

Flipping on his flashlight, he reached down with his gloved hands and felt around inside the hole. Smoothing away another layer of dirt, he could see what was there: a couple of big plastic garbage bags all wrapped together and tied with loose rope. Trash? An old Christmas tree? He tried to lift the bundle. No, too heavy, and all one piece. Had a relative tossed in a bag of the old man's possessions at the funeral in 1978? Did Russians do that? Had they buried the old man in a bag?

Then his breath caught as he thought, It's a body that got out of its coffin! The shape was right, the length and size of the thing in there—did they even have plastic trash bags in 1978? The bags didn't look twenty-five years old, either.

Scrambling out of the hole, he shivered. The urge to get out of there was so compelling that he had to plant his feet harder on the ground to keep himself from leaving the whole shebang behind and running like hell.

Think.

He stomped his feet a few times, got back in, and shined the light carefully all around the bags. Just more damp dirt, harder underneath.

He scratched his head, heedless of the dirt.
Okay
. Open the freakin' bag. He took out his buck knife and slit through three layers of black plastic, and . . .

An arm fell out. He shined the light on it, saw what it was, and stumbled back against the dank soil wall he had dug, half in and half out of the grave.

“Shit!” he shouted. He looked anxiously around but saw nobody. Wind flowed in from the sea and lifted his hair.

The thin female arm, ending in painted nails, wore a plain watch with a black leather band. Crouched right there, a foot from the bag, Stefan looked at the arm for a second. She might be alive! He reached out gingerly to touch the cold, dirty hand. He lifted it, feeling for a pulse.

He was ready for the thing to start twitching, to grab at him. But the hand was dead, and so was its owner. He pushed the button on the watch and the backlight flashed on, ticking, time accurate to the minute.

Now he should slit the bag and look at her, but he did not want to see her face, maybe see the evidence of some wasting disease or car-crash injury. He didn't want to dream of a dead face for the rest of his life. She was none of his business! No—
he
was none of
hers
!

Momentarily stifling his fear, anger flashed through him. Somebody was playing with his head. He should go right now, gather up his stuff and just bolt.

He reconsidered. Maybe the gravediggers often threw someone in on top of another coffin. Weren't there double tiers sometimes? The cheap seats. The bunks. He didn't smile at the thought. He had gone through all that worry, dug until his back was killing him, and now, by God, he would find the old man and get what he came for.

All the hard work was done. He pulled his gloves up tight, then lifted the body in the trash bags. Her body, heavy, flopped around like a beat-up stuffed toy. He found it hard to hold on. Horribly, her arm fell against his chest as he laid the body on the ground beside the hole. He cried out.

She's dead. She doesn't care, he told himself, jumping back into the hole. In staccato, powerful thrusts, he struck the ground with the pointed tip of his shovel, rapidly opening up a narrow trench. For some time he didn't think at all. Another hour went by. She became company, his silent witness, rolled over a few feet away and sleeping. Did souls hang around after death? What would her soul look like?

Would he just feel it like a worm wiggling into his ear? Damn these chills running up and down under his parka—he was going to have to quit, he felt sick with fear . . .

“Shit!” Hurting his shoulder, he hit something. He dug harder, deeper, like a crazy man. Not much farther down, the top of a mahogany casket showed up, exactly what he had been told to expect.

“There you are, you damn dead Russian,” he grunted.

The clasp, so firm looking, was not locked. Wiping off the dirt, he closed his eyes and opened it.

Swamp air. As squeamish as a tourist on a tossing boat, old food rising in his esophagus like a tide, he opened his eyes and looked at the remains of Constantin Zhukovsky.

Thank God. Just bones in rags. Not enough humanity left to say, Get away from my casket, you son of a bitch.

Pulling the duffel in, Stefan breathlessly stuffed the bones in, everything falling apart as he packed sloppily, like he was going on a little vacation to Hell. Feet. The skull, with hair, the hat falling off. Bits of clothing clinging to the skeleton fell away as he picked up the ribs.

Something small and hard fell into the coffin, and he rooted around until he found it. In the dark he couldn't see very well what he had, but it was made of metal. He ran a grimy fingernail over the blackened surface and saw a golden gleam. The haunts were everywhere, all around him, outside and inside, and his thoughts had gotten disorganized. Fingers trembling, he stuck the metal object into a pocket. Quickly, he pushed the duffel out of the hole and slammed the lid of the casket. Then he climbed out, filthy, not caring, just wanting it to be over.

The dead woman lay in her plastic shroud on the gravel, pitiful, frightful. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He felt her wrist one more time—the lifeblood not pumping—tucked her arm back in and rolled her over to the lip. He let her drop and heard the thud. Then he shoveled dirt until his heart pounded with the effort and sweat flicked off his face.

He tried hard to repair the surface so the gravel wouldn't look too bad. He couldn't see well enough to know if he had succeeded. The edges could probably use something to make the merge between the intact and the disturbed earth invisible, but all he could do was stomp the ground and riffle around with the toe of his shoe, hoping things would look okay when daylight came.

Bones, it turned out, weren't so heavy, but they didn't lie neatly in the duffel. They seemed reluctant to give up their structure. He couldn't zip the bag all the way. He carried the partly open thing over his shoulder across the grass and stones, under the dripping trees, then threw it over the fence, climbed over, and skulked back to the car, looking around the whole time, seeing things that just couldn't be there, eyes in the bushes, dark forms of ghosts hiding behind trees.

Trying to open the trunk, he fiddled with his keys, but his hands shook so much, the usual jiggling didn't work. He laid the duffel in the back seat, on the floor, stuffing it down and covering the remains with a blanket.

All he had to do now was drive up Highway 1 and drop the duffel into a Dumpster behind the self-store place in Marina. The guy who had hired him would take it from there, and mail Stefan another five hundred the next day.

Driving slowly along Pearl Street, he struggled with himself, sweating in the cold. Who was the dead woman? Was he meant to find her? Why? On Aguajito he turned at a dignified speed. A few other cars, lights, people. He felt comforted being around the few night stragglers still on the streets.

He turned on some music and sank in to the driver's seat, let out a big breath. All good. He fingered the little Buddha around his neck.

At the corner of Sixth, a red light erupted behind his car, just the silent, turning red light, but he knew right away that it didn't matter that he had driven perfectly.

He should have known. He never got away with anything.

He pulled over.

Telling the story had drained him. “Erin dumped me. She only came to see me once, to tell me she dropped my stuff at my mom's.”

“That's rough,” Nina said.

“Her parents were already iffy on me because of me being in jail a couple of times before.”

Nina nodded sympathetically.

“That's the worst part, losing Erin. But here's what I'm thinking. I go on the stand—whatever you call it when you get up in court to testify—and I tell the jury what happened, the whole thing, spit it out. What do you think are the chances that they'll believe me? Because if they do, she has to. I know she's hurting, too.”

“It's an interesting story.” He did tell a good story, but then many of her clients did. They all had such excellent motivation for lying, and months in jail to perfect their yarns. If a lie bought you freedom, and telling the truth bought you imprisonment, well, the choice was a no-brainer for most of them. “I'm going to go back to it in a minute to ask you some questions. But I ought to say right now, Stefan—you won't be telling any of this to the court.”

“Why not?”

“It's very unusual for a criminal defendant to testify. You have the right not to testify, and a jury isn't allowed to draw any negative conclusions if you don't. If you do, all kinds of havoc can break out. In your case, you have two prior convictions. The prosecutor will make a very big deal out of them if you testify, which automatically makes you look very bad to the jury. Sometimes that's fatal.”

“Yes, but how will the jury know what happened if I—”

“The witnesses and the hard evidence have to do the job for you.”

Then Nina took him through the whole thing again.

3

Monday 9/1

N
INA PARKED A BLOCK AWAY AND WALKED PAST THE FLOWERS AND
art galleries of the quaint tourist mecca of Carmel to the offices of Pohlmann, Cunningham, Turk. She arrived at the white wood-frame office on the corner of Lincoln and Eighth by eleven-thirty, buoyed by her talk with Stefan Wyatt. The early morning fog had burned off and she had made good time from Salinas, consolidating her thoughts all the way.

Innocent or guilty, at least she liked the client. Some clients were so angry, so distant, or so disturbed that they were an ordeal to sit next to at all. Stefan was a cooperator. The jury wouldn't dislike him on sight. She reminded herself to try to get some young women on it.

Walking up the white-brick stairway to the law offices, she remembered herself in her thick-soled athletic shoes bounding up these same stairs during her law clerk days. Somehow she had managed to take care of Bob as a single mom, work at the Pohlmann firm, and go to the Monterey College of Law at night. None of her subsequent incarnations, as an appellate lawyer in San Francisco and as a sole practitioner at Tahoe, had been as harried, yet she remembered those days, when she had been deeply immersed in learning new things and raising a little boy, as happy and rewarding.

Back then she had assumed that the financial need, her single life, and her direction in law would all be resolved by now. Well, marrying would be a resolution of sorts, but she had lived enough to know that a good life didn't resolve. It offered satisfying moments, new beginnings, and more irresolution.

Nina wasn't completely lacking in self-consciousness, but she found thinking about her own life confusing. Other people's lives never bored her, though—their lies, their capitulations, their bad luck, their fates. Other people's situations made her skin vibrate, her heart beat louder, her blood pump harder. She could do practical things, applying her intelligence and rationality to their lives in ways she never could for her own. She could make a difference, and what else was there to live for before you ended up moldering in a coffin, bones, like the poor man in this case?

Love? She held up her left hand and looked at the glittering diamond on her finger. It had a sharp, definite look about it.

Near the top of the stairs, hurrying too much, she paused by the window. One of the secretaries had kept a delicate flower garden going out there in the old days, and the white building that had started its life as a house had blue irises, red geraniums, and a hominess that didn't seem present anymore in the practical juniper bushes and clumps of tall grass waving in the soft gray air.

Nodding at the receptionist, she walked down the short hall and opened the door to her new office.

Nina's secretary from Tahoe, Sandy Whitefeather, filled the brown chair in the compact front office like a lion balancing four legs on a tiny stone. Today she wore a down vest over a black turtleneck over a long denim skirt and burgundy cowboy boots. Sandy's long black hair was pulled into a beaded band that fell down her back. Behind her, a mullioned picture window looked over a courtyard full of stalky weeds and wildflowers.

She hung up the phone, saying, “About time. I see you have new shoes again. You're gonna break your neck one of these days, wearing those torture heels.”

“You have new shoes, too. Don't tell me those narrow pointy toes are the shape of your foot. I've seen your feet. I bet they're killing you.”

“Yeah, but I like what I see when I look down.”

Nina sat down and kicked off the high heels. “Okay, we'll both get bunions. Peace pipe?”

“Hmph. The Washoe people don't use peace pipes. Get your stereotypes straight.” She studied Nina. “New shoes,” she said, “and jewelry, too. A whole new you.”

Nina felt obscurely embarrassed, but she held out her finger for Sandy's scrutiny.

“Big,” Sandy said. She wasn't looking at the ring. She was looking at Nina.

“It was his grandmother's.”

“Tradition is good.”

“No need to fall out of your chair celebrating or anything.”

“Congratulations, of course.”

“Thanks.”

“It's a big step.”

“Forward,” Nina said firmly.

“How did Bob take the news?”

Bob had spotted the ring the minute she picked him up from her father's house. She tried to explain, but he put up a hand. “I know what a ring means, Mom.” His reaction had been mixed, not altogether positive, but not harsh, to her relief.

“He'll need time to adjust to the idea,” she told Sandy, realizing she was using Paul's words.

“So you'll be staying here. With the golfers and the retirees.”

More assumptions. “We haven't worked out the details.”

“Hmm.” Sandy turned back to the paperwork on her desk. “I made up the files and left a list of the D.A.'s office and other numbers on your desk. Mr. Pohlmann says the firm's taking you to lunch. He dropped off some of his files for you.”

“Great.”

They had a month to work through everything, including the upcoming trial. Although Nina had succumbed to Klaus almost immediately, she hadn't actually committed to Stefan Wyatt's case until she had found out Sandy wasn't just available, she was eager to take a break from Tahoe. Solid, matter-of-fact, and smart, Sandy was a friend too, for all her crankiness and obstinacy. With her along for the ride, Nina felt strong and supported.

After finishing up a job in Washington lobbying for more Washoe ancestral lands, Sandy had come down to Monterey County with her husband, Joseph, and established herself immediately with some old friends who ranched near Big Sur, where her son, Wish, was already staying. As she explained it, one of her daughters had shown up unexpectedly a month before at their ranch near Markleeville, kids in tow, husband glaring.

Sandy didn't go into what had brought her daughter home, she just said the tepee up in Alpine County, actually a small horse ranch she and Joseph owned, was feeling mighty cramped these days. Joseph was recovering from surgery and needed fresh air, riding, and “no more of what that girl of ours has to give at the moment.” She had accepted Nina's offer of a temporary position at the Pohlmann firm without bothering to ask a single question.

If Nina stayed here in Carmel with Paul, she would lose Sandy. Sandy was rooted to Tahoe deep as the white pines and ancient oaks on her property. The idea made Nina quake. She needed Sandy.

“How did it go with Wyatt this morning?” Sandy asked.

“It's a long story.” Nina gave her an abbreviated version. “Could you get my interview notes into the computer today?”

“Sure. Guilty or not?”

“Don't know.”

“Didn't you form a first impression?”

“He looks harmless.”

“But then so did Jeffrey Dahmer. I heard Stefan Wyatt went to school at CSUMB for a while before he got arrested,” Sandy said. Her son, Wish, had also attended California State University at Monterey Bay that summer, picking up more credits toward a degree in criminal justice. “You know their thing, right?”

“No,” said Nina. She picked up the top file Klaus had left and scanned it.

“Holistic studies,” Sandy said, her voice passing stern judgment.

“Okay.”

“Good place for kids with bad attitudes who can't cut it in the real world.”

“Wait a minute. Your own son goes there. Wish says he has terrific teachers.”

“He's not doing that holistic stuff. He's on the vocational side.”

“I think it sounds interesting. And it sure fits Wyatt's style. He's young, loose, in the tearing-down phase politically.”

Sandy, shifting in a borrowed chair, black eyes narrowed, expressed the mood of the displaced and dispossessed, saying, “Other people have to be practical about what they study so they can get along after college. Other people settle down, pay a mortgage, keep a business going . . .”

“Without gallivanting around the Monterey Peninsula, grabbing diamond rings, when they should be back practicing law at Tahoe with their long-suffering secretary. Is that what you're saying?”

Sandy put on her poker face.

“I'm not sure I need a hard time from you this morning, Sandy.”

“You call this a hard time? Where's the groom?”

“Paul's due in a few minutes. I called him on my way in from Salinas and told him about my interview with the client.”

“That Dutchman's a bad influence on you.”

“Yeah?” Nina said, putting one report aside and picking up another. “Seems like you always used to promote him as the solution to my problems.”

“Did not,” Sandy said.

“What are you working on there?”

“Paperwork, to do with your temporary employment here, health insurance forms, tax info. As usual, you generate more stuff to be assembled than a four-year-old at Christmas. Meanwhile, take a look at this.”

Nina took the file. “What have we here?”

“When Stefan Wyatt first retained the firm, Klaus hired a detective. This is his report. Read it and weep, while I finish copying the rest for you.”

Nina went into her temporary office. Yellowing oak bookshelves covered three walls, mostly full of California codes. The stately blue leather compendiums of yore were quickly becoming obsolete in law firms. She could rely on her computer for most of her research these days.

One wall held a big window to the courtyard with its beach fog, bees, and weeds. She sat down at the unfamiliar desk, into a chair molded to fit some other body. She opened a drawer in the desk she had been loaned for the duration. Inside, lint, dust, and moldy mints had accumulated. Not allowing herself to think of her bright and pleasant office at Tahoe, now in the hands of a young lawyer friend, she shut the drawer, picked up the file, and began to read with concentration this time.

“So?” Sandy asked from the doorway a few minutes later.

“Aside from its brevity,” Nina said, “what surprises me most about this report are Klaus's notes about it.”

“What notes?”

“Exactly. There aren't any notes. No follow-ups. No signed witness statements. The report itself—this investigator interviewed witnesses, but he gave Klaus a couple of no-content paragraphs on each interview. I question whether he talked to these people in person or just gave them a quick call. Why did Klaus hire this guy anyway? He's known and used Paul for years. Why didn't Klaus call Paul?”

Sandy wore an expression that looked exactly like the first and the last time she had eaten squid in Nina's presence. “Sandy?”

“Mr. Pohlmann did call Paul.”

“Oh, no,” Nina said. She already knew: Klaus had called Paul, but Paul didn't know; ergo, interception.

“If Bob was in jail, what would you do?”

Sandy's son, Wish, had been charged with a serious crime earlier in the summer. Abandoning her temporary job in Washington, Sandy had come to make sure Nina and Paul were going to keep him out of jail.

“You're telling me that while we were using Paul's office this summer, at his kind invitation, you took a call for him from Klaus?”

“I did answer a few of his calls. Paul was really strapped for time.”

“Klaus said he needed Paul's help on the Zhukovsky case but you never told Paul?”

“Triage is what they call it in an emergency,” Sandy said. “Caring for the sickest first. So when Klaus called, I told him Paul wasn't available. He was busy.”

“That wasn't right, Sandy.”

“Yep.” Sandy pulled at her lower lip, a sign of deep thought.

“Does Paul know?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. I don't like this. We're going to have to help Klaus get organized. Call this investigator and find out if you have all the reports. Find out who he actually interviewed. I'll give you a list tomorrow of the people he should have spoken with. Call them and try to get some appointments for him. Coordinate schedules with Paul, so he's free when we need him. We have to catch up, and there's no time. Paul's going to miss some sleep, and so are we.”

“Fair enough. Logical consequences. I'm paying the price.” She took the file and picked up the phone.

“If Sandy's paying, I want to be invited,” said Paul, poking his head through the door. He wore the forest green cashmere sweater Nina had given him for his last birthday, and tan slacks. Gently, he touched Nina's shoulder, nodding at Sandy.

“Congratulations, Paul,” Sandy said. “Such changes.”

He grinned. “Thanks. Taking me to lunch, are you?”

“Sure,” Sandy said.

He had been joking. Now he looked flabbergasted.

“A big, nice lunch,” Nina said. “Sandy was just saying how she's looking forward to working with you again and really wants to treat you today. To one of Carmel's finest restaurants, your choice.”

“Sounds great,” Paul said, exuding faint alarm. “What time?”

“One.”

“I get it. You have some friendly words of advice for me and Nina, huh?”

“Who said anything about being friendly?” Sandy turned back to her desk and got busy.

Paul followed Nina into her office, swept her into his arms, and gave her a delicious kiss on the mouth. “You look fantastic in navy blue,” he said. He squeezed her waist.

“That's good, since it's about all you'll see me in for the next month.” Nina moved out of his arms and rustled through a steeple of files.

“Maybe I've misjudged Sandy,” Paul said, stepping toward the window to peer out. “I admit to occasional midnight doubts that she likes me at all. That's a very generous offer.”

“She likes you, all right. And she respects your work more than you know. Take a look at this.”

Paul came over to her desk to take the main body of the investigative report. As he read, he scratched his head. “Feeble. I mean, ‘Subject said he didn't know anything'? It's like that all the way through. Somebody always knows something. You'll find that on page one of Paul van Wagoner's monograph for the novice investigator.”

“If somebody knows something, you'd never know it from this.” She tried to keep most of the concern she was feeling from her voice. So far, everything Klaus had given her had been sketchy at best. Where was the promised preparation? Not in this report.

“Why didn't Klaus call me?” Paul asked. “First time to my knowledge he didn't when he needed some real work done. He around?”